Bringing IT and OT together

In another life I spent just shy of nine years in the ICS space. I worked on the IT security side of the house and helped to shore up defenses. One of the troublesome aspects of this role was the disconnect between IT and OT, or operational technology, who were responsible for the care and feeding of the SCADA systems.

There was some interaction between the two sides of the house but, it often felt like cats and dogs learning to rhumba. It wasn’t pretty.

Yesterday, I was on a panel at the (ISC)2 Security Congress in Anaheim, CA with Howard Schmidt, Galina Antova and our moderator Brandon Dunlap. We discussed how to better integrate these two sides. I often liken IT and OT to two separate tribes that spoke different languages with a shared goal. However, that shared goal was often not recognized as being such when I was in that space. It has been seven years since I last worked in that field but, based on our interaction with the attendees it appears that not much has changed in the intervening years.